(no subject)
Dec. 29th, 2006 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aadler– – – – – –
We’re coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the first airing of “Welcome to the Hellmouth”. And, of course, not much longer — a year and a half — until the 5-year mark on “Chosen”, the very last Buffy episode. What was cutting-edge is now past-tense, and will be the distant past before we know it.
Buffy enriched my life, in ways difficult to specify; I was halfway through Season Three before the discovery of online fandom made me realize just how much a fan I had myself become. In some ways, it became part of my identity … but it never came close to defining me, to becoming the majority (or even most important) segment of who I am. It was fun, and I enjoyed it, and now it’s gone, and I’m still going strong.
All the same, I miss it.
It may not have been vital to me, but it was significant. Why else would I continue to produce Buffyfic, most of which was written after the show went off the air? Why else did I attend two WriterCons, also after the original series had ended (and never mind that, following the second, I was vilified as misogynistic, intolerant, hostile, homopohobic, and whatever other pejorative you want to plug in)? Why else, while I was in the middle of the Sunni Triangle, did the news that Angel was being cancelled trigger a minor, brief, but identifiable depression? Why else am I so excited at the prospect of a fully canonical Season Eight to be “aired” by DarkHorse Comics?
It isn’t who I am, and never was. For awhile there, though, it was the single greatest source of entertainment in my life, and with its departure I’ve filled the space with lesser entities. Along with some that clearly are NOT lesser, but still …
Buffy was my first. There are plenty of other things to love, but I will never again give my heart so unreservedly.
We’re coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the first airing of “Welcome to the Hellmouth”. And, of course, not much longer — a year and a half — until the 5-year mark on “Chosen”, the very last Buffy episode. What was cutting-edge is now past-tense, and will be the distant past before we know it.
Buffy enriched my life, in ways difficult to specify; I was halfway through Season Three before the discovery of online fandom made me realize just how much a fan I had myself become. In some ways, it became part of my identity … but it never came close to defining me, to becoming the majority (or even most important) segment of who I am. It was fun, and I enjoyed it, and now it’s gone, and I’m still going strong.
All the same, I miss it.
It may not have been vital to me, but it was significant. Why else would I continue to produce Buffyfic, most of which was written after the show went off the air? Why else did I attend two WriterCons, also after the original series had ended (and never mind that, following the second, I was vilified as misogynistic, intolerant, hostile, homopohobic, and whatever other pejorative you want to plug in)? Why else, while I was in the middle of the Sunni Triangle, did the news that Angel was being cancelled trigger a minor, brief, but identifiable depression? Why else am I so excited at the prospect of a fully canonical Season Eight to be “aired” by DarkHorse Comics?
It isn’t who I am, and never was. For awhile there, though, it was the single greatest source of entertainment in my life, and with its departure I’ve filled the space with lesser entities. Along with some that clearly are NOT lesser, but still …
Buffy was my first. There are plenty of other things to love, but I will never again give my heart so unreservedly.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-30 06:42 am (UTC)I'm excited about the comic too, and I'm not a reader of comics as a rule!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-30 05:21 pm (UTC)The main question on my mind at this point is not, Will it be good?. Given that Joss himself is behind it, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be at least comparable to the live-action seasons. No, what I’m mostly waiting to see is, Will it give a boost (in terms of creativity and morale) to online fanfic?. Aside from a genuine objective interest, there’s also the matter of whether such a boost would affect my own writing.
Also — and this is a relatively minor consideration, but it’s there — I got through all of Buffy and all of Angel without ever being Jossed in any of my writings. Even though I’ve written only one story set post-“Chosen”, Season Eight will test me yet again.
See? In the end, it’s all about me.